The present technology includes an extreme pressure additive package formulated with a biodegradable sulfur component, which additive package can achieve suitable extreme pressure performance when formulated into a fully formulated industrial gear oil lubricant.
Industrial gearboxes see extreme operating conditions that can lead to damage, for example, wear to the internal components of the gearbox. This damage reduces the life of the industrial gearbox and can lead to costly and prolonged maintenance, repair costs, unscheduled downtime for the equipment that contains the industrial gearbox, and similar problems.
There is an on-going need for improved industrial gearbox lubricants that can provide better performance in and protection of industrial gearboxes, thus extending the service life of the industrial gearboxes and the equipment that contains them.
One means of protecting an industrial gearbox is to lubricate the gearbox with a lubricant having sulfur containing compounds. The sulfur in the sulfur containing compounds can react with the metal surfaces of gears to provide a thin protective layer over the metal surface that is resistant to extreme pressures and metalon-metal wear. Such sulfur containing extreme pressure agents used in industrial gear oils are not biodegradeable. It would be desirable to reduce or eliminate the need for such non-biodegradeable compounds from lubricating compositions.
Because of the importance of sulfur in providing protection against extreme pressures and wear, there has not been a viable solution to the reduction or elimination of such non-biodegradable sulfur-containing compounds.
There is a need for an industrial gear lubricant that can provide suitable gearbox protection with minimal amounts of non-biodegradable components.